City of New Haven

BRANDING | WEB DESIGN | PHOTOGRAPHY

The City of New Haven's municipal website gets a redesign!

OVERVIEW

The City of New Haven contracted with W!CDG to design their new municipal website. We helped the city to manage the information coming from each department and conducted a full content audit on all of their existing content from the previous site. WOW! was in charge of all things visual - from the layout, the information architecture, the user experience to the colors, fonts and photos used throughout the site. W!CGD worked closely with the city staff and the web development company, Granicus, to achieve a site that was not only aesthetically pleasing, but a powerful resource for residents trying to access city services in a more intuitive way.

This site is still in the early stages of possibilities as we plan to roll out phase 2 in the near future. We're working on fillable forms, informational videos, how-to guides and more!

What you're looking at...

1. 9 "tiles" on the home page represent the 9 square blocks in downtown New Haven. These tiles link users to information & assistance pages, where we've collected links, pages and PDFs to better help find what it is they're looking for.

2. The department page: This one happens to be the Assessor's Office. Each department page features a "hero" image, followed by a main menu and a home page.

3. Working with the city's GIS Analyst, we were able to create useful maps for residents to obtain map-driven information quickly and efficiently. This map shows the "Find your Alder" map, which yields the Alder and Ward information when a user puts his or her address into the search bar. We've included Alder photos & contact info.

4. Department pages feature a "contact box" that introduces the user to the department director and provides them with a quick list of info like offie hours, address, phone numbers, emails and other ways to get in touch with each specific department. We feature the Parks & Recreation Department above.

5.The Home Page: This page features original photography captured by us and other beauty shots that will direct the users to an important information or events.

6. Department pages also get social media accounts embedded into each of their home pages. We feature Facebook, Instagram & Twitter!

7. The New Haven Fire Department had folders full of photos, so we gave them a gallery.

8.My New Haven is a feature for residents that allows them to customize their user experience by essentially "bookmarking" their most frequented pages.

9.Here is an example of an "Information & Assistance" page. We collected all the relative links, PDFs, URLS & pages and put them all on one page.

What you're looking at...

1. On the "News You can Use" section, users are presented with daily updates that features important information about things happening in New Haven.

2. When mapping out a UX strategy, we found a way to take all of the potential reasons for users to visit the site an deliver them in a simple and engaging way. By using the "I'd like to" approach on the homepage and in the main navigation, a user can quickly get to the pages he or she is looking for.

3. Another glamour shot of the home page =)

4. This is the city-wide calendar. We integrated one master calendar that gets fed events from individual department calendars. That way, users can filter through the events calendar based on the type of event they're looking for.

5. Our "cultural events" happening around the city get a little more real estate on the home page. 4 dynamic images appear next to the calendar and feature photo, title, usually date and a click-through link where the user can get more information.

Visuals that rep the city

PHOTOGRAPHY

Working with our team of photographers, we were able to identify and capture many of the elements that make New Haven unique. These photos can be seen on the hero images on the department pages, and more can be found scattered throughout.